Opening Friday in limited release, Win Win stars Giamatti as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer and part-time high school wrestling coach who, to make some extra money for his family, somewhat unethically agrees to be the guardian for one of his elderly clients (Burt Young). His client's grandson, Kyle (Shaffer), turns out to be a champion wrestler who is coerced to compete on Mike's team. Shaffer, a first time actor and real life high school state champion wrestler (now sans the bleach blond hair he sports in the film), is not afraid in the least to hold his own on the same screen -- or in the same room, for that matter -- as the Academy Award-nominated Giamatti; Movieline talked to the duo about the difficulties of being a first time actor, if high school wrestlers still watch Vision Quest, why Giamatti should do a baseball movie (but never will) and the perks of having Big Momma's House on one's resume.
[After some initial chit-chat, the subject quickly turns to Giamatti grilling Shaffer on his dislike of coffee.]
Giamatti: [Sips some coffee]: You want some coffee Shaff?
Shaffer: I don't drink coffee.
Giamatti: You don't?
Shaffer: No.
Giamatti: You don't smoke or drink coffee or anything? You smoke cigarettes?
Shaffer: No way.
Giamatti: OK.
Shaffer: What do you mean, "OK"? I don't smoke!
Giamatti: I was just wondering about cigarettes, that's all.
Shaffer: No. I chew tobacco.
Giamatti: Do you?
Shaffer: Yeah.
Giamatti: For Christ's sake.
Shaffer: Grisly Mint.
Giamatti: Is that what it is? That stuff's nasty, man.
Shaffer: No it's not, dude. You have to pack a lip one of these days.
Giamatti: I used to do it a long time ago.
To be fair, I don't drink coffee either. It smells great, though.
Shaffer: I get that aftertaste in my mouth.
I drink a lot of Diet Pepsi.
Giamatti: I can't drink that, either
Shaffer: My dad drinks so much Diet Coke. He drinks so much of it...
Giamatti: That stuff is so nasty tasting.
I liked your movie, by the way.
Giamatti: [Laughing] Thanks!
Shaffer: Yeah, I guess we should talk about it.
Giamatti: No, Grisly Mint and coffee!
So did they find you or did you have to try out in an audition?
Shaffer: There was an open audition, basically, in the newspaper, and my friend told me I should audition for it. My first response was like, "No, dude, I do not want to do that. It's wrestling season; I want to focus on wrestling." But eventually I was like, "Why not?" It was a once in a lifetime experience.
Giamatti: Was [your friend] a wrestler?
Shaffer: Yes.
Giamatti: Oh, he was?
Shaffer: He's awful. He's an awful wrestler...
Giamatti: So he didn't go in for it? That's pretty cool of him.
Did they tell you, "Hey, you're perfect for this, but unfortunately we are looking for a kid with blond hair?"
Giamatti: Wait, you were blond already?
Shaffer: I came in to the audition with my beach blond hair.
Giamatti: Didn't your whole team do that?
Shaffer: Yeah, my whole team did it for [one meet].
I know with your father there's a sports background in your family, but did you have a wrestling background at all?
Giamatti: I wrestled one semester during high school. And I was not very good.
Shaffer: You did judo, too.
Giamatti: I did do judo. Judo is great! I loved that until, I think I told you this...
Shaffer: You got the crap beat out of you.
Giamatti: He slammed me so hard into the ground. Up until then I had been loving it. And it's interesting because it's the difference between me just kind of being into it and having a good time and like a guy who really wanted to kill me. And once I realized that that's what it's going to become, I was like, "I'm not interested." I was like, "Holy sh*t."
From what I remember from my wrestling friends in high school, you're either really into it or you're not.
Giamatti: There's no in-between. You don't half-ass it. Do kids on your team half-ass it?
Shaffer: Those are the JV kids who don't cut any weight and just kind of like walk around at practice. Those are what we named the "J-birds" -- they don't really put much into the practice. But my actual wrestling partner was a J-bird.
Giamatti: Was he good?
Shaffer: No. He wasn't good but we had the exact same style. And I give the kid respect because when the districts and regionals come around, they don't wrestle. So a lot of them stop coming to the practices. He came to all of the practices.
I might be dating myself with this question, but how many times have you seen Vision Quest?
Shaffer: Oh, I've seen Vision Quest so many times!
Giamatti: Have you really?
Shaffer: Oh! I've watched Vision Quest...
Giamatti: Is that a movie you guys watch as wrestlers? Like, you're into it because it's a wrestling movie?
Shaffer: I watch it just because it's a wrestling movie. It's not like I'm into it. I mean, 300, that was a movie I used to watch before my matches.
Giamatti: Really? That's hilarious.
Shaffer: To get pumped!
I was going to ask if Win Win was the best wrestling movie since Vision Quest, but isn't Win Win the only wrestling movie since Vision Quest?
Giamatti: I think it's the only one.
Shaffer: There are a whole bunch of bad, independent ones. Like there was this one called Reversal. Reversal showed "the real side of wrestling." That was like what real wrestling was like; it was about this kid growing up wrestling, and he was 5 years old and his dad was putting him in the sweatsuit. So that was the real side of wrestling -- but it was not good.
Does this movie answer the age-old question: Is it harder to act or wrestle? To be honest, I'm not sure if that's an age-old question or not.
Giamatti: Well, that's a good question, actually. Which is harder?
Because if they just brought in an actor and said, "Hey, we're going to teach you some moves"...
Giamatti: They could have done that, but it wouldn't have been as good. At all.
Shaffer: I think acting is, overall, to become the best at it, is still much harder than to become the best at wrestling... I couldn't even finish that sentence because they're two different things. They are completely different skills, and it's just as hard to be good at wrestling as it is to be as good of an actor.
True, they are two different things. But for this specific job, both were required.
Giamatti: Well, the thing is, the lucky thing is... Well, not "lucky," because [director] Tom [McCarthy] could tell you were going to be a good actor. So once he could handle the acting -- not so much just the actual wrestling moves -- but the way he carries himself, everything, was completely authentic. And you could have gotten a very good actor who could have done that, but, still, it wouldn't have been the same thing.
You mentioned a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Does that mean you don't want to act anymore?
Shaffer: Oh, I want to do mo
re. I guess it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to get your foot in the door. I definitely want to do more.
Giamatti: Cool.
Shaffer: Cool? You didn't know that I wanted to more? This comes to you as a surprise?
Giamatti: No... I mean, I didn't know how serious you were about it. You've gotten more serious about it since the last time that I saw you, which was last year...
Shaffer: No. You saw me at Sundance. But that doesn't count because [sarcastically] that was so recent.
Giamatti: Jesus Christ, it wasn't that long ago.
OK, so it sounds like something you've been thinking about more recently.
Shaffer: I mean, while I was making the movie I was thinking about it, but it wasn't a decision I made until probably after the movie. After everything was done, probably around summertime, I was really getting into it and getting into acting.
This is only your second sports movie after Cinderella Man. When reading scripts, do you hold sports movies to a higher standard because your dad was commissioner of Major League Baseball?
Giamatti: No. It just has to be a good script, whatever it is. No, I don't look at it from any sense of my own background. Honestly, I even forget about that when I'm flipping a script. That never even really occurred to me with my own background and my father and stuff like that.
I didn't know if there was ever a sense of, "Yeah, I know how this stuff really works!"
Giamatti: [Laughs] Oh, no. No. I mean... a baseball movie? Maybe. I don't know, that might be different. I might think differently about that.
Shaffer: I think you would make a good baseball coach.
Giamatti: I could be a good baseball coach. I could be like Tommy Lasorda. I could do that. [Laughs]
But then there will be the press questions.
Giamatti: Yeah, there's that, too.
[Sarcastically] So, what do you think about steroids?
Giamatti: Exactly! That's another reason I probably wouldn't do a baseball movie.
What was the hardest part for you in filming a movie, considering it was your first?
Shaffer: I would say acting in general was the hardest part for me. I mean, I didn't know how to do it. I was kind of just pretending to be someone else. That's really what acting is. But I was taking it very simply; I was acting in a very simple way. But just working with Paul and Amy, and all of them really got me into it.
Giamatti: Simple is the way to do it, though.
When filming the wrestling scenes, did you just do your thing or did you have to slow anything down for film?
Shaffer: Yeah, every once in a while they would say, "Um, could you get in the frame?" I think we had to slow down a couple of times. We had to go out of bounds at a certain place.
Did you ever want to say with the wrestling aspect, "I know what I'm doing. It's my way or the highway?"
Shaffer: [Laughs] No!
Giamatti: I will say, there's something that happened with you, and I thought it was so fascinating. You may not even remember this. There's a thing toward the end where he fights with me on the lawn and he pins me. And I was sort of supposed to be chasing him, and I kind of grab at you and you fall over. And we were shooting a couple of times and I would reach for him to grab and he would start to go over, but he would never hit the ground. And Tom kept saying, "You've got to fall over, man." And you were like, "OK." And then we would do it again and you wouldn't fall over. He'd almost fall over, but he'd always get himself back up. And you came over to me at one point and you said, "Dude, I can't fall over. I can't do that. I don't want to fall over." It's like you couldn't let go of the idea that as a wrestler, "I'm not going to fall." So you literally had to practice falling. I literally had to take him out and push him over.
Shaffer: I had to be a falling lump. I didn't know how.
Giamatti: He didn't know how to do it because his body kind of wouldn't let you do it.
Like a reflex?
Shaffer: Yeah, it was weird.
Giamatti: You would almost hit the ground but then still get up! Your legs would get under and you would get back up.
Shaffer: When I would hit the ground, my back would never touch the ground.
Giamatti: It was fascinating. His body had it's own instinct.
In moments like that, did you have to remind yourself that the actor you're working with has never acted before?
Giamatti: No, I never felt like that. Like, "Oh, gee, this kid doesn't get it," or something.
Did you, Alex, ever feel like that? That maybe you didn't belong?
Shaffer: Probably once or twice. I was a little nervous...
Giamatti: [Starts laughing]
Shaffer: OK, I have to say it did go by in my mind, like, I have to get this scene right because Paul and Bobby [Cannavale] are doing so great. Or everyone is waiting on me, I have to get this scene done. I mean, maybe like once or twice. They always made me feel really comfortable.
Giamatti: You know, you never showed it. I would have never known that you felt like that, ever.
So we are tossing around the idea of doing a "Movies You Had No Idea Paul Giamatti Is In" post.
Giamatti: Oh?
Big Momma's House was surprising to me.
Giamatti: Not to me! I remember being in that! I guess so. I mean, there are a lot of people out there in the world who know I was in that movie. A lot of people recognize me for that.
Shaffer: I remember your story from when you were in Ohio and you were in a bad neighborhood and they told you that you couldn't walk around...
Giamatti: It was in Cleveland, they said, "Don't leave the set, don't walk around this neighborhood." I was like, "Enh." So I walked around. You know, it was a predominantly black neighborhood, and everybody had seen Big Momma's House. So I was fine. Everybody was like, "Oh my God, don't..." And [in the neighborhood] it was just like "Big Momma's House!"
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